Photography Forums UK

Format · by **Denaellen** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 5:32 pm

I know this is going to sound pathetic but what does it mean when the camera 'formats'. I suggested my husband do this on his camera and lost all his photos. To say he was not pleased with me is an understatement so any help would be very gratefully received.

Re: Format · by **ahab** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 5:41 pm

Formatting on a camera is the same as formatting a hard drive on a PC you will lose everthing stored of the flashdrive or whatever storage you use.

Re: Format · by **Kenny** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 5:48 pm

as long as you have not used the card since, you can google for image recovery software( theres loads of it free on the net) and that will recover all the deleted files when the card was formatted.

When you prep a drive or card you create a master directory on it- a sort of big list that keeps track of everything you put on the card/disk or whatever. Each time you add something to the physical drive it updates the list to tell the drive where that item is saved. When you format a drive as in normal format and not a low level format you simply erase the master record and create a new one. Your data still remains on the drive and so with special software you can recover it. However, if yoou format the drive or card and then use it again, most often( though not always) it will be impossible to recover data from it...though forensic grade software can recover up to ten times back formatted cards. If you LOW LEVEL format a card though- which a camera itself wont do, then you totally wipe the partitition on the card or device and then its really hard and expensive to recover anything

Moral of story...back your card up BEFORE you format it.

Re: Format · by **ahab** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 5:56 pm

Forgot about that Kenny but it can be expensive, but well pointed out.

Re: Format · by **JR1** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 6:43 pm

ahab wrote:Formatting on a camera is the same as formatting a hard drive on a PC you will lose everthing stored of the flashdrive or whatever storage you use.

No you won't.

Re: Format · by **JR1** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 6:52 pm

1. Hard drives and storage devices have what is known as a MBR master boot record, which contains all the important infor of what is stored and where, the MBR is stored at the very start of the tracks on the hard drive near the centre and the head moves out from the centre when writing, the "flying height" of the head from the disk is between 3-7 millionths of an inch, and floats on a bubble of air, remember that the next time you knock your laptop or desktop.

2. There are 2 levels of format standard/high level format where the data is simply deleted but the MBR remains in tact, and a low level formay where the MBR is supposedly deleted, sorry Kenny but some cameras such as my 60D WILL low level format a card.

3. http://www.ntfs.com/hard-disk-basics.htm

This is a superb site to learn all about it. I have been into computing since CP/M, that is before MS/DOS and windows which is before windows 3.1, 3.11 etc. It is interesting to read about.

I can assure you that I am able to recover information from even low level formatted hard drives, and have regularly recovered info from 10 year old storage that has been written over

Use

Pandora recovery

http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/

Re: Format · by **JR1** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 6:52 pm

Denaellen wrote:I know this is going to sound pathetic but what does it mean when the camera 'formats'. I suggested my husband do this on his camera and lost all his photos. To say he was not pleased with me is an understatement so any help would be very gratefully received.

He has NOT lost the photos, stop using tha card, pm me if needed

http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/

Re: Format · by **chris Hodgson** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:10 pm

recovered info from 10 year old storage that has been written over

I'd love to know how it's possible to recover data that has been written over :shock:

Recover data from sectors that have not been written on, I can understand. But once it has been over-written, it is gone for good.
Panda is good for image recovery etc, I've used it a few times myself over the years

Re: Format · by **Kenny** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:16 pm

acording to what Ive been told by my next door neaighbour who is a qualified foresnic science operative, there are programs not in the public domain that can at a forensic level recover data from ten generations back Chris. its used in National security and in legal investigations and is not commonly available. Last time I saw anything near it was the Hirens boot disk from about ten years back which perportedly had a hacked version of the software on it. its supposed to recover the minutest thing off a dsk. I dont personally know if this is true and can only go off what someone tells me but I do remember speaking to a tech at Scan computers once who alsi mentioned forensic recovery of data from a mult formated drive.

Re: Format · by **chris Hodgson** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:29 pm

HDD's work the same way any magnetic recording device does. Once the pattern of the magnetic surface has changed, you can't recover what was there before the change. The surface has no memory of past over-written patterns. You may well be able to recover fragments from sectors that have not been overwritten, or the tags from the mbr, but not over-written data

Formatting doesn't remove data, it simply removes the data's tag/ID. So you can format a drive 1000 times, and the data will still be there. But if you write over that data, it is gone for good